by Amy Vastine
“He had dinner with his parents tonight, and then he was going to go over to Lauren’s. I’ll call Lauren and give her a heads-up that he’s back.” He knew he didn’t really have to do that. Enough people in town had seen Mitch—there was no way the news hadn’t gotten back to Lauren already. Aaron could only hope that no one mentioned he’d been on Bonnie’s doorstep.
Pacing back and forth in the hall, Bonnie chewed on her thumbnail. “You have to go there.”
“Maybe we should both go. You and me.” Maybe they could even announce they were sort of a couple. Wouldn’t that put all these rumors to rest? If she was dating Aaron, she couldn’t be dating Mitch, too.
“I don’t know. If she saw me and Mitch together—even though we aren’t together—it could be a complete disaster.” She stopped pacing and dropped her arms to her side. “I also can’t keep putting you in the middle of this. You’ve strained your relationship with your sister enough for me already.”
“If I didn’t want to be in the middle of it, I wouldn’t be. But I have your back. All the way.”
Bonnie shook her head, her determination clear in her eyes. “It’s time for me to stop avoiding her. I need to face her and finally have my say. It’ll be better if Mitch is there, because then there won’t be any confusion. Everyone will be on the same page about how I feel and who I want to be with.”
She bit down on her bottom lip. Did that mean what he thought it meant? Did she feel things for him, and was she willing to tell Lauren about it? Aaron really wanted to be there for that.
“Any chance you’re feeling things for someone I know?”
One side of her mouth curled up in a crooked smile. “I’ll let you know after our date on Friday.”
Their date. They had a date. Why did he pick Friday when it was only Tuesday? That seemed so far away.
“I look forward to it, Miss Windsor,” he said with a little bow.
“As do I, Mr. Cole.” She clasped her hands behind his neck and kissed him ever so chastely.
Aaron floated out of the hospital and back to the house. For all the drama today, one thing was certain. He was falling head over heels for Bonnie, and she might just feel the same way about him. The thought would get him through anything Mitch and Lauren would throw their way.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BONNIE FELT LIKE a stalker sitting in her car outside Lauren’s house. She didn’t want to go in until after Mitch got there. If Mitch didn’t show up, she wasn’t sure she was going to have this conversation with Lauren. All the bravery she’d showed Aaron at the hospital had disappeared as soon as she turned onto Lauren’s street.
“It’s just Lauren,” she reminded herself in the rearview mirror. Lauren, who slept with a stuffed animal named Baby Hippo until she was fifteen. She acted way tougher than she really was. Bonnie knew that deep down there was an extremely fragile person in there. She was much more vulnerable than she let on.
A knock on the passenger side window nearly gave her a heart attack. Lauren pulled on the door handle and motioned for Bonnie to unlock the door. Bonnie let her in.
“Are you working up the nerve to come in and kill me, or are you waiting out here for the guy you hired to kill me to come out and tell you the job is complete?” she asked, sitting down in the passenger’s seat. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and she had taken off all her makeup.
“I—I—I didn’t come to kill you,” Bonnie stammered. Why would she think that?
“Then why are you creeping outside my house?”
There was a simple answer to that, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to say it out loud in case Mitch didn’t show up. “I was working up the nerve to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“Mitch is back in town.”
“I know. I’m also not surprised you know that already. I’m assuming you two have seen each other since he returned from France?”
“He came over to apologize for making such a stupid spectacle at your wedding,” Bonnie admitted. There was no doubt someone had told Lauren that they had seen him at her house.
Lauren fixed her gaze on something outside in front of the car. “You weren’t excited to see him?”
“I like to believe that you are not half as self-absorbed as people like to think and you actually noticed that I was never overly friendly or nice to him.”
“You are always nice to everyone, Bonnie.” Lauren turned her head and smirked. “It’s one of your more annoying traits.”
Touché. “Are you implying I have more than one?”
Lauren shrugged and looked down at her nails. “I don’t think you came here to hear all the reasons I think you’re annoying.”
It was strange to be sitting next to her best friend like she had a million times over the last twenty-plus years but not be friends. It sucked, actually. “Did Aaron call you?”
“Yes,” she answered, giving nothing else.
“Did he tell you that Mitch was coming over here tonight to talk to you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you that I was coming over?”
“No. Did he know you were coming over as well?”
“Yes.” Bonnie waited to see if using Lauren’s short answers against her would get her attention.
She finally gave in and made eye contact. “Why did you want to come over with Mitch? To beg for my forgiveness and ask for my blessing? Because that is never going to happen. Let’s be clear about that.”
Bonnie pretended to slam her head against the steering wheel. Anything to stop this torture. “Do you even listen to anything I say? Do you hear yourself? It’s ridiculous. There is no me and Mitch. There never was. There never will be. He was your boyfriend. Your fiancé. Your ex. No matter what title you give him, it’s always preceded by the word Lauren’s.”
Speaking of the devil, Mitch pulled into Lauren’s driveway. The two women stayed in the car and watched silently as he got out and went to her front door.
“I don’t want to talk to him,” Lauren finally said. The hurt in her voice was palpable.
Bonnie didn’t blame her. Nothing Mitch had to say was going to make Lauren feel any better about herself or the situation. He wasn’t here to tell her he’d made a mistake. He only wanted to remind her that he had left her for Bonnie.
Maybe if they knew how she felt about Aaron, all of this would be over. Of course, Bonnie wasn’t sure how Lauren would feel about Bonnie’s attraction to Aaron. She liked him. She knew he liked her. She really liked kissing him. He was funny and chivalrous and didn’t take himself too seriously. He had a desire to make the world a better place, not only for himself, but for others. She loved that.
“He was going to tell you that you shouldn’t blame me. At least, that’s what he told Aaron he was going to say. He wasn’t aware that I had taken the fall for his infatuation. Your wedding day was the first time he ever made me aware that he had any feelings for me. That is the God’s honest truth.”
Mitch stepped off the porch and peeked through the windows on the front of the house. He tried the doorbell one more time before giving up and going back to his car. Bonnie was glad she had parked on the street and not in the driveway. Mitch was oblivious to the two of them sitting right there.
“You were my best friend,” Lauren said, reaching for the door handle. “I just don’t know.”
Lauren got out of the car and jogged across the street back to her house. Bonnie let her head fall back against the headrest. What was there to know? She hadn’t done anything. Why couldn’t Lauren admit that she was wrong? That she was sorry she hadn’t believed her from the start? There was nothing left to say. If Lauren couldn’t believe the truth, Bonnie was done trying to feed it to her. They had been best friends, but were no more.
Bonnie drove to her dad’s, needing someone who loved her unconditionally to tell her it would all
be okay. She found her dad sitting in his recliner chair in the living room when she got to his house. His feet were up and his TV was turned to the game-show channel, his favorite. She locked the front door behind her, and her heart rate was just about back to normal.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
Maybe she didn’t look as calm as she thought she did. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
“And I’m a ballroom dancer. What happened?”
“I talked to Lauren.”
He put the footrest down and leaned forward. “How did that go?”
“About as well as you would expect.”
“So, not well?” he guessed.
Bonnie wasn’t sure what it was about her that made him guess she was frazzled. She fixed her ponytail and pressed the back of her hand to her cheeks to see if they were warm. “She isn’t going to get over this. With Mitch back, it will probably only get worse. What do you think about you and me moving down to San Diego? Perfect weather. Plenty of real estate for me to sell. Lots of construction jobs for you to do.”
“We are not going to be run out of this town, Bon Bon. Lauren is going to come around. Trust me.”
She wanted him to trust her. She was beginning to worry it wasn’t going to get better. At some point, Bonnie might have to leave Blue Springs.
* * *
“YOU HAVE TO help me.” Mitch stood in Aaron’s kitchen with his hands in his hair. “What’s it going to take to get Lauren to forgive me?”
“Amnesia, a brain tumor that causes memory loss, divine intervention maybe,” Aaron suggested. Those were really the only ways Lauren would ever forgive and forget.
Mitch dropped his hands to his sides. “That is not helpful. You are my best friend. You have to help me.”
“I don’t have to help you do anything. You’re lucky I even invited you into my home. You crushed my sister by dumping her at the altar. You ruined my friend’s reputation at the same time, and you come back without asking me once what I’ve been up to while you’ve been gone.”
“So what have you been up to while I’ve been gone, Aaron?” he asked, taking a seat at the island.
“Well, thanks so much for asking, Mitchell. I have been super busy. I quit my job, bought a house to remodel and have been working nonstop to flip it so I can start doing that for a living. My dad’s not speaking to me. My sister is mad at me for working with her ex–best friend’s dad and doesn’t know that I have also been working with her. And I learned I can make delicious tacos.”
“Why in the world would you quit your job? Your dad was basically giving you money. All you had to do was show up.”
Aaron scrubbed his face with his hands. Sometimes he questioned how he’d ever become friends with Mitch in the first place. “You are the one who gets paid for doing nothing. I am the one who actually had to work long hours and was miserable.”
“But you were making money.”
“And now I make people happy by designing their dream home,” he said with a flourish.
“So you hire people to fix up these houses and then sell them off for big bucks? I could do that.”
“No, I actually do the work.” He had the sore muscles and the cuts and scrapes to prove it. “I hired Bonnie’s dad after my father fired him because you made everyone believe Bonnie knew you were in love with her.”
Mitch didn’t respond to the part where Aaron tried to hold him accountable. “You’ve got to be kidding. You do manual labor? That sounds horrible.”
“I enjoy it. It’s a million times better than sitting in a boardroom all day.”
“Nope. I could sit in a boardroom all day for the rest of my life as long as I had Wi-Fi and my computer and the administrative assistants kept bringing snacks and drinks in.”
Aaron was certain that Mitch had never actually worked a day in his life. “You better pray your father’s business never goes under.”
“Speaking of food and drinks, you got any?” He got up and helped himself to what was in the refrigerator. “So where is this house you’re flipping?”
“Over on Greenbriar. It’s this ranch on a big lot. Lots of trees. It’s nice.”
“And Bonnie is helping you?”
Aaron didn’t want to talk about Bonnie. Not with Mitch. “She helped design the interior.”
Mitch nodded. “Okay, now that we’ve caught up on what you’ve been doing, how about you tell me how to win your sister’s forgiveness.”
Aaron had no ideas. If he had, he would have shared them with Bonnie, not Mitch. Mitch deserved whatever Lauren was going to do to him. He wondered if now was a good time to mention he was going on a date with Bonnie this Friday or not. He wondered how Mitch would take that. He hadn’t said anything about how he felt about Bonnie.
“I went to her house tonight, and she wouldn’t even answer the door.”
Aaron shrugged. “Lauren does what Lauren wants. She doesn’t care what you want.”
“I don’t want her to hurt Bonnie anymore. Do you have any bread? I want to make a sandwich.”
He pointed Mitch in the direction of the bread and then picked up his phone to send Bonnie a text. He wondered if she had seen him show up at Lauren’s and if she’d tried to talk to Lauren as well.
“Who are you texting? You have the most serious look on your face.” Mitch laughed as he took a bite of his sandwich.
If he told Mitch he was texting Bonnie, how would he respond? Aaron wasn’t sure he wanted to know. If he told Mitch that they were kind of dating, everyone would know in a matter of hours. He wasn’t sure how Bonnie felt about that information getting out just yet. It was better to let Mitch believe he was just a concerned older brother. “I was checking on Lauren.”
His front door opened, and before he could process what was happening, Lauren stormed in. “I need to talk to you,” she said before stopping dead in her tracks.
Mitch froze midbite.
Without a word, she spun around and marched right back out the door. Aaron chased after her. “Lauren, hold up.”
Red-faced, she turned back to him. “You are the worst brother in the entire world!” she shouted. “Every time I need you, there you are being buddy-buddy with my mortal enemies. You have made it perfectly clear that my feelings mean nothing to you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Ha! When it comes to family loyalty, you have none. You are completely disloyal. You put everyone ahead of me. All I needed tonight was my big brother to talk to about how I’m feeling, and instead you’re hanging out with Mitch. I guess I should be surprised it wasn’t Bonnie, because all you do these days is align yourself with the people who hurt me.”
Aaron felt like a complete heel. Even though Bonnie hadn’t done anything, the same couldn’t be said for Mitch. Aaron was currently being quite hospitable to the person who broke his sister’s heart. “I’m sorry. He came over here to talk about how to make things better. I’m seriously trying to find a way to make peace. I can’t do that if I leave him to his own devices.”
“I’ll never find peace as long as you keep allowing them to be part of your life. I can’t do it anymore, Aaron.”
“I totally understand why you feel that way about Mitch, but things are different with Bonnie. I know you and Bonnie are going to find a way to get past this misunderstanding.”
Apparently that was the wrong choice of words. “Misunderstanding? I don’t think anyone would call cheating with your best friend’s fiancé a misunderstanding.”
“She didn’t cheat with him! Would you please stop saying that? You are the only one who thinks that’s true. Go back in there and ask Mitch yourself. He’ll tell you he didn’t cheat.”
Lauren had tears running down her face, making Aaron feel like an even bigger jerk. “Of course he’s going to tell me he didn’t cheat. He’s a liar. That’s what liars do. They lie.”
“I’m not trying to hurt you by not agreeing with you. I am trying to get things back to normal. All I want is for everyone to get along. I’m not good with all this conflict. I don’t know how to hate people. I know that’s what you want me to do, but that’s not who I am. I can promise you that I’ve made it known that I am not happy with how he treated you. I have been trying to get him to make better choices so he doesn’t continue to hurt you. I know you think he’s lying, but I don’t. I don’t think he’s lying about Bonnie. I know he’s not, because I also trust Bonnie. You used to trust Bonnie. Think about why you used to trust her.”
“You’ve made your choice, Aaron. You didn’t choose me. There’s nothing more to say.”
She was breaking his heart. “Lauren,” he called after her as she walked away.
She didn’t stop and he feared the pain in his chest wouldn’t, either.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SOMETHING WAS OFF. Bonnie couldn’t put her finger on it, but something had changed the night Mitch came back. For some reason, Aaron became more distant. The next day, he asked if they could postpone their date, claiming there was way too much to do on the house and he needed to work late and get there at the break of dawn on Saturday. When she stopped by the house to check on the progress, he had little to say to her and almost seemed to be avoiding her.
How could they go from kissing on the couch to not even speaking in less than twenty-four hours? She tried to brush it off. Could she be overthinking it? For sure. Days became weeks, and still this wedge existed between them. She wanted to ask him what had happened, but feared what his answer might be.
* * *
TODAY, SHE WAS working at the realty office, hating every minute she had to sit behind that desk. To her surprise, Mitch strode in. “Hey, I need to hire a Realtor,” he said.
Bonnie didn’t know what to say. “I’ll let Gordon know you’re here.”